Noctropolis

This game was one of my favorites when it came out and none have overshadowed it. The Tex Murphy series comes close but doesn't quite grasp me the way Noctropolis did. Not only are the characters fun... not to mention in a couple of cases (Stiletto and Succubus.. wow!) very easy on the eyes. You play a comic book store owner who is transported into the world of his favorite superhero... Darksheer. Once your character arrives in the city of night he must take the place of his beloved hero and save the city from the mysterious plot involving the sun spire. The best thing about this game is that once you win the game your reward is not the simple endgame sequence tying things together, but you get a rather extended series of outtakes and bloopers from the live action actors that are part of the game. I have yet to feel as rewarded for completing any other computer game. The security guard actors Barney Fife impersonation is priceless.

This is a cool old Dos game from 94. The story is about a comic book store owner being transported to the comic book world of the comic hero Darksheer. The real Darksheer is missing and you must assume his role with the help of his trusted leather clad buxom assistant Stiletto, played sharply by Playboy playmate Hope Marie Carlton, (WOW!!!), yeah you get to see them. There's also this Succubus character who seduces you from the beginning whose outfit is nothing more than a teddy garters and high heels. Check this out if you can find a copy.

Noctropolis is an example of what you get when you let the technology push your ideas, and not the other way around. The graphics were great, and the video clips were a great innovation when this game appeared...

However, the game dynamics were quite modest. Noctropolis tried to be a cool graphic adventure, but the puzzles were kind of simple. Besides, the biggest difficulties came from the fact that, at some some points, you had to click on some precise spot on the screen (like, when having to try each and every single bar in a fence to find the loose one... either you click on the right pixel or you are stuck): while this might seem as "realistic", it made a game that was far less addictive than other adventures from the time (Monkey Island, anyone?).

The story of the game was very nice in principle, but the development was almost inexistent. You are supposed to deal with five villains before Flux itself, but you reach the end of Noctropolis while most of the villains are out there: the Diva, the evil doctor, the morpheus... all of them are free and you never encounter them again after they make yourself look like a loser. The plot is at some points more predictable than an A-team episode: one of the villains finds you (only once per villain), they kick your ass and you cannot help it, they leave you in some bad situation, they leave, you escape, and return to your pool to recover health, so that you can go to some place in the map where the next villain from the lot will kick your ass. Everything is very "deus ex machina".

In conclusion, a very nice technology for the time, but a shame the game was not up to the expectations. And let's not talk about the unnecessary nudes...